Back to the Blog

Wow, that was a long break.  More than 2 months since our last blog post, and I have so quickly forgotten how to do this that I am struggling to post pictures, struggling to remember the WordPress functions!  Anyways, we’re back!  Kyle tends to post a lot of photos and updates to Facebook through his iPhone, but with the WordPress app on there he should be able to post those here too, so we can update a bit more regularly.  I know many of you see everything on Facebook, but I like being able to look back at the blog as a record – Facebook isn’t as convenient for that.

So I’ll use this first post to update on how the kids are growing.  Both have now hit their half-birthdays and I really want a reminder of who they were at these unique ages.  Luke turned 3.5 on March 5, Evelyn 1.5 on April 20. I don’t think either of them could imagine life without the other, a true benefit to having them so close together.  They are entering the more challenging sibling rivalry stage though and get into some huge fights.  Luke is becoming so much more capable of fine motor skills tasks now – building things, designing things, drawing pictures… then Evelyn, in all her 1.5 yr old madness, comes in a ruins what he’s working on.  She just really wants to be involved, but unfortunately he doesn’t see it that way.  But the times they do play together are incredible.  Hearing Luke yell “Come on Evelyn let’s go!” and watching the two of them take off on some common task is one of the most amazing feelings in the world.  They love playing together, and for the 40% of the time when things go good, it’s absolutely worth it.

Luke at 3.5 is a big boy – still hovering around 43/44 lbs but growing taller every week it seems.  He towers over most of his friends and continues to be a stocky solid little boy, just like he always was.  He is growing into an extremely sensitive little boy who really thinks about the things we point out or the things he sees.  We have some fascinating conversations these days about tough stuff like death (why do people go in the ground to die?) and his language skills continue to improve.  We think he may have a bit of a speech impediment, as he doesn’t enunciate things like S and R very clearly, but I imagine that will still develop a bit in the next couple years.  He loves his preschool class and his Chinese is incredible.  In the space of about a month he went from primarily using 1-word and pointing to speaking in complete sentences.  He switches easily between the two languages when talking to our Ayi and his sister, and his teachers are all really impressed in how quickly he is picking it up.  He continues to be a wild, rough-and-tumble, difficult-at-times little boy, but by and large he is more and more fun to hang out with.  I only wish I had more time one-on-one with him, because I think there are a lot of fun things we could do.

At 18 months Evelyn is between 24-26 lbs, and is also growing in height more than weight these days.  I don’t think she’s gained a pound since she was about 10 months old.  She moves like a 3 yr old, running, jumping, walking so confidently you’d think she had been doing it for years.  Her verbal skills are so much broader than Luke’s ever were at her age (remember, he said his first word at 17 months!).  She will say almost anything, even repeating long complicated sentences.  I don’t think she knows what she’s saying, but her fascination with words and language is so different.  I would say that she speaks about 70% Chinese, 30% English.  Being with the Ayi all day it’s no wonder.   She has a little gaggle of friends who live in our neighbourhood – another 4 or 5 little girls around the same age as her, and she spends most of every day with her “xiao pengyou” (little friends) and their Ayis.  She goes to an accompanied preschool program and is enjoying it more and more, sometimes even sitting and listening to the teachers (as all 18 month olds are expected to do in Chinese school – no hands-on exploratory learning here…).  My dreams for a baby with long hair like I had, that could be braided and put in ponytails are quickly fading.  Although her hair keeps filling out and getting longer, it is curling so tightly around itself I can’t imagine it will ever be long.  Some of her ringlets curl 4 or 5 times in a spiral already!  She has her Aunty Heather’s hair for sure, and I can’t remember my sister having long-ish hair until at least Kindergarten, if not later.  I’ll keep trying, but for now, it’s just a mess of wild curls.   She is very much a girly-girl.  She loves wearing skirts, dressing up, and putting on things like bracelets and necklaces.  She’ll put on something new, like a hat or a barrette, and if we say “Hao Piaoliang!” (so pretty!) she’ll happily trot off to show everyone in the house, repeating her “look, how pretty!” phrase everywhere she goes.  She has a fierce temper, particularly when she doesn’t get her way, and I think we all accept that she’s going to be quite the challenge when she gets a bit stronger.

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